Sef Townsend is a storyteller and musician. He’s collected stories and songs from his travels all around the globe, and has worked with refugees, people in exile and those in asylum detention. Sef’s work has included peace and reconciliation projects, and sharing his stories with audiences in schools, museums, churches, mosques and synagogues around the world. He has co-written two collections of short stories: London Folk Tales for Children (The History Press, 2019) and London’s River Tales for...
May 10, 2024•47 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Yousif M. Qasmiyeh is a poet and scholar whose work has appeared in publications including Modern Poetry in Translation , Critical Quarterly , Cambridge Literary Review , New England Review , and Poetry London . His collection Writing the Camp (Broken Sleep Books, 2021), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2022 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize . Yousif is Writer in Residence for Refugee Hosts - a research project at University College London. His latest...
May 03, 2024•52 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Rachel Mann is a poet, theologian, broadcaster, and Anglican priest, who, since 2023, has served as Archdeacon of Salford and Bolton. She has published two collections of poetry: her first, A Kingdom of Love (Carcanet, 2019) was highly commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry . The areas covered by her work include theology, cultural history, and heavy metal music; she’s also written a book of reflections for Lent based on the works of Jane Austen. Rachel has appeared as a panellist on the BBC...
Apr 26, 2024•45 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Dong Jin Kim is a writer and academic whose research interests are in the areas of peacebuilding, humanitarian and development cooperation, theology, and comparative studies of peace processes. He has collaborated with various humanitarian, development, and peace and reconciliation organisations, including Okedongmu Children in Korea, Korean Sharing Movement , and Corrymeela. Jin was a Senior Research Fellow in Peace and Reconciliation Studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity College ...
Apr 19, 2024•49 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. She has written three novels, two collections of short stories, and two flash fiction anthologies; her work has also appeared in a number of journals and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Her second novel, The Fire Starters (Transworld, 2019), won the EU Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Novel of the Year Award. Her latest short story collection, Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published by Penguin in Apr...
Apr 12, 2024•48 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Prof. John Paul Lederach is a conflict transformation practitioner, writer, and academic. He has worked with communities all over the world, in countries including Somalia, Nicaragua, and Nepal. John Paul is the author of more than twenty books including The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005), When Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys Through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation (University of Queensland Press, 2010), and Reconcile: Confict...
Apr 05, 2024•57 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Dr. Peter Coleman is a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University, and a renowned expert on constructive conflict resolution, intractable conflict, and sustaining peace. He directs the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution and is co-executive director of Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4). Peter is also the co-creator of the Conflict Intelligence Assessment and the Polarization Detox Cha...
Nov 10, 2023•55 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Nóirín Ní Riain is an Irish theologian and recording artist who has performed to audiences all over the world. She specialises in Irish traditional music and Gregorian chant, and has collaborated musically with the monks of Glenstal Abbey in Co. Limerick, where she lived for many years. Nóirín is the author of Theosony: Towards a Theology of Listening (Columba Books, 2011), and the autobiography Listen With the Ear of the Heart (Veritas, 2010). She was ordained as an interfaith minister in 2017,...
Nov 03, 2023•57 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Lesley Carroll is an ordained Presbyterian minister. She’s held a number of public roles in Northern Ireland, including serving as deputy chief commissioner at the Equality Commission and as an associate member of the Victims and Survivors Forum . In 2006, she was appointed to a member of the Independent Consultative Group on the Past. She has served as the Prisoner Ombudsman for Northern Ireland since 2019. A full transcript of the episode, along with group discussion questions, is available he...
Oct 28, 2023•48 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Juliane Okot Bitek is a poet. Her 100 Days (University of Alberta Press, 2016) was nominated for several writing prizes including the 2017 BC Book Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, the 2017 Alberta Book Awards and the 2017 Canadian Authors Award for Poetry. It won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection, A is for Acholi (Wolsak and Wynn, 2022), was shortlisted for the 2023 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and is a fina...
Oct 20, 2023•49 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Sarah Perry, the internationally bestselling author of the novels Melmoth (Serpent’s Tail, 2018), The Essex Serpent (Serpent’s Tail, 2016), and After Me Comes the Flood (Serpent’s Tail, 2014), and the non-fiction Essex Girls (Serpent’s Tail, 2020). She is a winner of the Waterstone’s Book of the Year Awards and the British Book Awards, and has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and...
Oct 13, 2023•51 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Richard Holloway, who was the Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church from 1986-2000. Richard is the author of thirty books, including Godless Morality: Keeping Religion Out of Ethics (Canongate, 1999), Stories We Tell Ourselves (Canongate, 2020), and Waiting for the Last Bus (Canongate, 2018). His book Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt (Canongate, 2012) was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and won the PEN Ackerley prize. He was chairman of...
Oct 06, 2023•51 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Duncan Morrow. Duncan is a lecturer in politics and Director of Community Engagement at Ulster University. In 1998, he was appointed as a Sentence Review Commissioner, and from 2002-2012 he was chief executive of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council . He has also chaired the Scottish government's advisory group on tackling sectarianism. Duncan’s academic interests include conflict, ethics, and religion. Duncan joins Pádraig to talk about the shifting natu...
May 12, 2023•47 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Veena O’Sullivan. Veena has worked for the international relief and development charity Tearfund since 2000. She has focused particularly on HIV, peacebuilding, and violence against women and girls. Originally from Bengaluru in the southern part of India, Veena has lived in Ireland since 2015. In 2021, she became the international director of Tearfund UK. Veena joins Pádraig to talk about the complexities of ‘relief and development’, and what sustains her in her work...
May 05, 2023•42 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Dr. Jude Lal Fernando. Jude is a campaigner and peace activist who coordinated the People’s Tribunal of Sri Lanka. He teaches interreligious theology and ethics at the Irish School of Ecumenics in Trinity College Dublin, and directs the Trinity Centre for Post-Conflict Justice. His publications include Religion, Conflict and Peace in Sri Lanka: The Politics of Interpretation of Nationhoods (Lit Verlag, 2013), and Resistance to Empire and Militarization: Reclaiming th...
Apr 28, 2023•47 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Oliver Jeffers . Oliver is a visual artist and author working in painting, bookmaking, illustration, collage, performance, and sculpture. Curiosity and humour are underlying themes throughout Oliver’s practice as an artist and storyteller. While investigating the ways the human mind understands its world, his work also functions as comic relief in the face of futility. His acclaimed picture books have been translated into over fifty languages, and have sold over 14 m...
Apr 21, 2023•42 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Marina Cantacuzino. Marina is an award-winning British journalist and founder of The Forgiveness Project , a UK charity that uses the real stories of victims and perpetrators to explore how ideas about forgiveness, reconciliation and restorative justice can be used to impact positively on people’s lives. Marina is also the creator of The F Word Podcast , and author of three books on the topic of forgiveness, including Forgiveness: An Exploration , which was published...
Apr 14, 2023•45 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Pádraig Ó Tuama is joined by Katy Hayward. Katy is Professor of Political Sociology at Queen’s University Belfast, a Fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, and an Eisenhower Fellow . Her latest books are the co-authored Northern Ireland a Generation After Good Friday (Manchester University Press, 2021) and the monograph What do we know and what should we do about… the Irish border? (Sage, 2021). She has written and presented to media, policy, c...
Apr 07, 2023•48 min•Season 2Ep. 1
The Corrymeela Podcast is back in 2023 for a second season, with six episodes in the spring and six in the autumn. Host Pádraig Ó Tuama will be speaking with artists and writers and academics about art, conflict, theology, politics, and reconciliation. We’ll be back with you on 7th April, speaking with the brilliant political sociologist Katy Hayward.
Mar 31, 2023•2 min
In this, the final episode of the first season of the Corrymeela podcast, Pádraig Ó Tuama speaks to Martin Hayes, the renowned and multi-award winning fiddle player. Martin talks about how music carries culture, memory, place and possibility. As always, Martin has his fiddle with him, so he plays music that demonstrates his insight. We have a full transcript and some reflection questions here. Martin Hayes’ website is martinhayes.com His albums can be found online or in music shops or directly f...
May 06, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 12
A trailer for the final Episode of Season 1 Corrymeela Podcast, featuring the renowned fiddle player Martin Hayes, from East Clare. This special episode features a conversation with Martin about how music carries culture, memory, place and possibility and features him playing the fiddle as well as talking. Full episode will be released on Thursday.
May 04, 2021•2 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Dr Lia Shimada is a a conflict mediator, a theologian and a geographer. She’s used these wide-ranging trainings to work at the interface of migration, ethnicity, change, religion and conflict. In this wide ranging conversation we discuss her experiences working in conflict mediation in Belfast, her experiences of migration, and how living with the death of her newborn son Rowan has influenced her sense of place. As always you can find some reflection questions and a full transcript here. This is...
Apr 29, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 11
This episode of the Corrymeela features host Pádraig Ó Tuama speaking with Michael Davies. Michael is the founder and director of Parallel Histories, a UK educational company that offers new ways to study the history of conflict. In this conversation we consider the ways history is taught in Britain, how the crisis of narration can be possibility, and how religion education would benefit by being taught through historical approaches, not only doctrinal ones. As always you can find reflection que...
Apr 22, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 10
This episode of the Corrymeela Podcast features Peter Sheridan. For many years he was known as one of the senior-most Catholics in the police in Northern Ireland, and his policing career spanned the reform of the RUC into the PSNI. At the age of 48 he made a career change and became chief exec of the peacebuilding charity Cooperation Ireland. As always you can find reflection questions and the full transcript here. And you can find out more about Cooperation Ireland here . As mentioned in the po...
Apr 15, 2021•48 min•Season 1Ep. 9
For this episode of the Corrymeela Podcast, host Pádraig Ó Tuama speaks with Dr Ebun Joseph — sociologist, author, speaker, and originator of Ireland’s first course in Black Studies, based at University College Dublin. This wide ranging conversation approaches questions of Irishness and Britishness through narratives of race, discrimination and financial policies in places of employment. You can find reflection questions and a full transcript here. You can find out more about Dr Ebun Joseph’s wo...
Apr 08, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Professor of Constitutional Law, Christine Bell, speaks to the Corrymeela Podcast about Peace Treaties, Brexit, the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and Human Rights. Christine Bell is a co-director of the Global Justice Academy, and a founder member of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (established under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement). As always you can find a full transcript of the episode, as well as reflection questions, here . You can find out more about Christine Bell’s wo...
Apr 01, 2021•51 min•Season 1Ep. 7
We were thrilled to speak to Irish rock legend The Edge, one part of U2. Born of Welsh parents and raised in Ireland, Edge has had longstanding interests in questions of politics, identity, belonging and religion. In this episode he speaks about all of these, and speaks, too, about how music has been the deepest call and passion of his life. Always interesting, always interested in learning, he shares what he’s reading, and how he sees the work of reconciliation being important in a changing Ire...
Mar 25, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 6
A brief trailer from the Corrymeela Podcast’s interview with The Edge, the legendary guitarist of the equally legendary Irish band U2. The full episode will be online — and in your podcast feeds — on the morning of Thursday 25th March, 2021.
Mar 21, 2021•2 min
We talk to the brilliant Claire Mitchell, a sociologist and writer from Belfast about Irishness, Britishness, border crossing, the unexpected advantages of a charismatic evangelical background, observations on religion from outside of religion, her grandmothers, and being a Lundy. As always you can read the full transcript and find some reflection questions for personal or group discussion . Claire Mitchell’s website has links to her books and articles....
Mar 18, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Our fourth episode is an interview with Professor Anthony Reddie who considers Britishness, Belonging and Brexit through a Black Liberationist Theological point of view. Incorporating stories of his working class upbringing in Bradford, his parents' part of the Windrush generation, and his interest in both theology and history, this interview is wide ranging and informative. As always we have provided a full transcript and some reflection questions for your personal or group use. Copies of Prof ...
Mar 11, 2021•56 min•Season 1Ep. 4
